Are Scare Tactics the Best Tactics?

Want to get your message across? Why not evoke fear in your audience – that will certainly get their attention, right? That’s the premise behind the FDA’s recent decision to require tobacco companies to place certain anti-smoking images on cigarette packaging.

You may have already heard about this. The images, which the FDA says must cover at least 50% of the front and back of each pack, range from the relatively tame (a photo of an oxygen mask) to those you may find disturbing (an image of an emaciated lung cancer patient or a man smoking through a hole in his throat).

The FDA will choose the final images by next summer and tobacco companies will have until October 2012 to place the images on their packaging.

So although it’s still a long ways out – do you think this will keep people from lighting up? We wonder if it will have more of an effect on stopping new smokers before the start – or on getting current smokers to quit.